The present invention relates to a process and a composition for attracting and retaining fish.
It more specifically relates to compositions usable for fishing making it possible to attract and retain fish in an area of an aquatic medium by recreating in said area olfactory and/or gustatory traces to which the fish are sensitive. It is pointed out that within the present context the term fish is understood to mean any animal living in salt, brackish or fresh water, which includes cetaceans, molluscs, crustaceons, etc.
Since time immemorial, certain fishermen have used various processes for attracting and/or retaining fish in order to more easily capture them with various known means (such as nets, draw nets, trawls, harpoons, fishing hooks, eel pots, etc). These processes can make use of visual, luminous, acoustic and/or vibratory lures, or baits prepared from synthetic and/or natural materials and which are used to give the impression that food is available.
Of late, synthetic bait methods have been developed by attempting to reconstitute in an artificial manner the flesh of fish normally serving as prey for the fish which are of interest to fishermen. With this aim in mind, studies have recently been carried out by A. D. F. JOHNSTONE and A. M. MACKIE concerning the possibility of using as bait products based on casein, to which is added a synthetic squid preparation. The research carried out up to now has only been in the laboratory stage and has more particularly related to the behaviour of fish with respect to such food offered to them in the aquarium. The synthetic squid preparation used was prepared on the basis of analyses performed on squid tissues. This preparation comprises numerous constituents, namely 17 different acids, betaine, betaine hydrochloride, trimethylamine oxide hydrochloride, trimethylamine hydrochloride, hypoxanthine, inosine, adenosine monophosphate and lactic acid. Laboratory tests carried out on the cod made it possible to show that the presence of a lipidic fraction in such food for fish was not essential because cod consumed the same amount of fish with or without lipids (cf the papers by A. D. F. JOHNSTONE and A. M. MACKIE entitled "Investigations of bait acceptance by the Cod, Gadus morhua L", read at the Bergen conference between May 28th and May 31st 1985).
Such compositions suffer from the disadvantage of having a large number of constituents. Moreover, as the authors indicate, the effectiveness of these compositions in the sea still has to be investigated, because it is not certain that they will be able attract fish possibly at a depth of several tens or hundreds of meters. Moreover, their stability in time is uncertain.
For some time now and as indicated in French Pat. No. 582 224, it is known that ammonia and turpentine have an attracting capacity for fish. However, although such compounds have an action on the fish, they do not make it possible to effectively attract and retain them.
In addition, up to now, there has been no composition making it possible to sufficiently effectively ensure the grouping of fish in an area of the aquatic medium where they can then easily be caught.